“Ladies and… oh.”

Spent the morning making up for failed attempts at sleep with surliness, TF2 and reading about 17th century misery, then hopped on my bike and whizzed down to the Arts block for the War Studies induction thing. Found myself sitting with two guys about my age, a chinbearded American in his mid-twenties and a considerably older man called Dave who was now doing this, his third degree, for fun at the end of a long and interesting-sounding career. We chatted, found common ground in WW2 interests and dislike of clubbing, and wondered “is this it? thought there’d be more”, upon which Dr Snape came in, attended by a platoon of first years.

This is the War Studies class of 2012: twenty-three white males, all but two (Dave and the American fellow) around my age, all but two (the American and a Parisian called Balthasar) from England, and the South of England at that. The broad demographic appeal of BA War Studies L252 is astounding.

Dr Snape, defiantly not hook-nosed, sallow-skinned or black-haired, told us much which made sense and was of use and a few things which had me somewhat alarmed, mostly that regarding module selection (which he had been told worked one way and we had been told worked another). Hopefully I will be getting both the Modern modules which I asked for, but asking around indicates that just about everyone wanted them too – sorry, medieval history professors, but you just can’t beat this much gunpowder. He seems a thoroughly good egg, although he did, sadly, use the world “proactive” without irony.
(As a sidenote: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d0/Europe_map_1648.PNG This, hopefully, is my period. Doesn’t it look fun?)

The introduction was briefly interrupted for a message from our spiritual sponsors, the Historical Society. There was a second year history student, the only female in the room, who fumbled wetly through a sales pitch for an e-newsletter to general apathy, but she was accompanied by a large, weathered, ponytailed fellow who spoke in a glorious voice and with some passion about the importance of joining the association, history in his view being “squeezed from the curriculum” and “perverted and distorted by those who seek to gain capital from its misrepresentation”. I’m sold. How do I shot cheque?

Got my timetables. They seem to clash with what’s on the eventually-located War Studies noticeboards. I would ask my tutor, the fantastically named Caterina Bruschi, but I haven’t met her yet and she hasn’t posted a date for such on her noticeboard.

Must tune up my laptop if I’m intent on actually getting any use out of it. The restoration of my Firefox settings and the tedious process of getting Word 07 to start in the way I want it to cannot be ignored, and I must also try to find something useful on the impenetrable Birmingham Wireless page (which I can only connect to on my desktop, as the wired connection on my laptop needs modem drivers which I got from Acer but don’t seem to be working. Hurrrrr.)

Tried the free Angel Delight the Asda hookers gave me. It tasted of pink. Okay for free, but I would not pay money for it. Also, om nom nom delicious baked potatoes and tuna and sweetcorn. This is the life, this is.